The present invention relates to improved features for cellular telephones.
The tremendous growth in the use of cellular telephones has greatly increased the probability that people will receive telephone calls when they are in public places, such as meetings, movie theaters and retail stores. Answering such calls in such public places can create problems for the person receiving the call. For example, the person receiving the call may not want to interrupt and disturb an important meeting by answering the phone call, or disturb other people who may be trying to watch a movie, or other public performance. Further, the person may want to preserve privacy by not answering the call until they are in a more private place. In addition, the environment may be too noisy for successful communication and the receiving telephone user may want to get to a quieter setting before answering. For all these reasons, people receiving calls in public places may wish to delay answering the call.
However, if there is a delay in answering the call, or the call is connected without the receiving party speaking into the phone, the caller may disconnect, thinking that the call attempt failed.
This set of circumstances creates the current situation where people are forced to rush out of the public place with the telephone ringing or buzzing, or to answer the call with a quickly spoken ‘hold on’ message and then get to a more private place as soon as possible.
Therefore, there remains a need in the field for improvements in delayed answering of calls to cellular phones.